This is the way the world ends
by Lady Heliotrope
Summary: This is the way the world ends, at three o'clock in the morning.


Rough winds did shake those darling buds of May  
>As the anxious princess of night was born from the queen of day.<br>Two Titans prepared to duel on the haggard face of Hogwarts that night,  
>Their roars preparing the supple fieldgrass to bend for the fight,<br>A fight that would threaten the bones of a thousand men and women  
>Who desired little more in life than the peace that once had been.<p>

They were not alone in their hopes to end the weary war:  
>One mighty hero embodied this purpose, but lay near-vanquished on the floor.<br>Desperate to fight time, a pool of his own blood around him,  
>This undivine man patched his wounds alone; he stunk too much with sin.<br>Severus Snape knew his insignificance well, and only prayed  
>That Dumbledore's gift of phoenix tears would be not squandered aid.<p>

In his heart he knew that there was nothing further he could do  
>To turn the fight in their favor, though it was a knowledge he rued.<br>All the more did he mourn that Dumbledore's plan  
>Was in action; the recipe called for death of more than one man.<br>Dumbledore had conferred with the fates concerning the best tests  
>Through which to put Snape, a man craving rest,<br>In designing the termination of Riddle, which meant that  
>Severus' life-purpose to preserve the boy was wrapped.<br>But despite the atrocity of Dumbledore's games,  
>Snape accepted Harry's death, paramount being his aim<br>To atone for his sins to a worshipful-woman fair,  
>Crushing the part of himself that had caused him to err.<p>

As the medicine did its duty as a balm to the corporal vessel,  
>Snape pondered his future in the event of a mission successful.<br>If the world learned his soul was merely unbeautiful-not unhuman-black pith,  
>He would merely be a post-Copernican Atlas, only beloved in myth.<br>Was this enough gratitude to make all the memories worth enduring?  
>A life-review was necessary to begin on his soul's structural repairing.<br>There had been so little satisfaction in all of his years of duplicitous lies  
>But there would be so much in fierce <em>Sectumsempras<em>and his enemies' surprise.

Thus he sated his imagination until his healing was done.  
>Though weak, Severus began to think of how the tired son<br>Of a demon could best turn against his father mid-battle.  
>Would it be better to retain his mask before the devil,<br>Explain the error that Satan had made,  
>And to expect a welcome back to serve in the unholy raid?<br>This would cost the life of at least one Malfoy;  
>Though Severus would not regret Lucius, the boy<br>He had promised Narcissa to keep safe for life.  
>Death for himself would be certain if he made Draco a sacrifice.<br>If this was not enough, his spirit and the boy's were kindred.  
>Snape never killed a man lest it was his duty sacred,<br>Much less one who bore all the hatred, anger, and pain  
>That Severus himself carried, long and in vain.<br>So unconflicted by cost, since neither daughter nor ducats had he,

Severus, like Atlas, did not foist off his burden for eternity.  
>But might the dark lord, at his abrupt reappearance,<br>Find due cause to kill him for the sin of resilience?  
>Snape thought he respected Fawkes' tears<br>Better than to gamble on the Moirae's shears.

So the safest chance to further the greatest good for the greatest number  
>In Snape's view, was the simple disguise of an anonymous glamor.<br>He wandered onto the field thus, with this guise  
>Drawing and shooting his arrows like Artemis wise<br>Empowered at the knowledge that he finally could fight  
>Without need to justify which party he thought more right.<br>The devil himself, had he been on the field,  
>Might have, beneath Snape's vigor, keeled<br>For Severus Snape was no selfserving bore  
>But a fighter, and survivor, and passionate menace of war.<br>It was not for his own colors that he fought, like Achilles fair;  
>He thought only of a beautiful doe with green eyes and glossy red hair,<br>Until the ceasefire came, and with tragic dignity  
>He and the others lowered their arms and took their dead from the sea<br>Of battle, where Posidon ruled in blood, to the distant dry shore.

Then all the living heroes, unsatisfied and enraged, returned for  
>The sight that grieved them all: Harry Potter, the divine child<br>Was borne in defeat by his dearest magical friend, the mild,  
>Impassioned, grief-ridden Hagrid, with a bawling so fierce<br>That the half-giant had a fortune's worth of tears in his beard.

This horror was not unexpected, however;  
>Not long ago Dumbledore had lost Snape's <em>her<em>  
>And it had only been a matter of time before<br>Those Potter-rimmed green eyes were no more.  
>The only thought that resonated in the mind and heart of the spy,<br>Was a poem-stanza, simple and hollow and terrible and dry:  
><em>This is the way the world ends,<br>The world ends, the world ends  
>This is the way the world ends<br>At three o'clock in the morning_.


End file.
